The World Line of the Horizon Star

Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world

The Cube Meme, Part III of III

January 1st, 2004

Current Mood:

playful

Current Music:

Amy X. Neuberg and Men: "Safe Love"

Cube Interpretation

This is part three of a three part meme which spans the previous two entries. The meme is a visualization/imagination exercise. If you haven't read the first part of this meme, then go back to the entry two entries previous to this entry to start. If you want to play, don't read my answers first so that you can approach the exercise with an open mind uninfluenced by what I have written. Don't post your imagined scene until you read the third part of this meme, which discusses the interpretation of what you've envisioned. That way, you can decide if you want to post based upon what the interpretation says about you. Mine is unedited from when I completed it in September of 2002.

The Cube is you --
Your symbolic self-portrait.

The Ladder
Represents your friends and your co-workers.

The Horse
Is your lover/life partner.

The Storm
Is trouble/upset/challenge --
life's power to stir things up.

The voCUBEulary

Interpreting Your Cube.

"Well, what does it mean?" is what most people ask after finishing the game. The right answer to that question is, "You tell us." After all, it's your Cube. The voCUBEulary was created to help.

We can't tell you for sure what your Cube means. But we can tell you what many types of Cubes (ladders, horses, etc.) have meant to thousands of others who've played the game.

The voCUBEulary is conveniently presented in alphabetical order and offers many possible qualities of cubes, ladders, horses, storms, and flowers. (Can't find yours? Choose the closest approximations.) Don't take these as the end, but as the beginning of understanding your Cube.

Also, try the following techniques for understanding your Cube:

Ask your mate, friends, and family what they see in your Cube's imagery. People who know you well can be surprisingly helpful in finding missing pieces of the puzzle.

Free-associate. Anything that pops into your head in connection with your Cube (Horse, Ladder, etc.) is a
vital clue.

Here you go. This is what I wrote, exactly as I wrote it, as I read the meme. Interesting...

_______________

red sandpale blue sky with high, wispy cloudsno vegetation

It is a Borg Cube1000+ feet tall, it’s hard to be precise.It’s right in front of me, sitting in a bowl-like depression in the desert floor, somewhat sunken into the sand.It’s made of metal – machinery parts and pipes and conduits, and unidentifiable bits of technology.It is dark grayish black. The surfaces are a bit pitted and rough close up, but the entire thing has a very irregular surface – utilitarian.It is hollowish – that is, it has compartments on the inside.It sits flat on the sand as if it has landed there.

cold, dark, menacing, intriguing, curious

It is an old, rickety wooden ladder, fifteen rungs, silvery aged wood, splintery and a bit decrepit. It leads to a dark hatch or doorway in the side of the cube facing me,

It is a chestnut quarter horse – Tammy actually, a horse that lived and died here on the farm. She has a small white star on her forehead, and she’s running across the sand on a kind of ridge that runs behind the cube, and she has neither bridle nor saddle.

The storm is brewing far off to the left (south). It looks to be a vicious sandstorm, dark and roiling, smudging the sky with a reddish blur of blown sand. It is too far away yet to tell which direction it is going, or whether it will affect the vicinity of the cube.

Ooops. Missed them on the first look around. There are a few white, daisy-like flowers with yellow eyes growing at the far-right corner of the cube. It looks as though they might have been crushed by the cube, but have survived and grown out from under it._______________

My name is Legion, for we are many

You are Pertho, aren't you? Heh heh. I would say that your ladder and storm say that your view of life and friends is a lot less pessimistic than you sometimes make it out to be. I think your flowers are saying what I have come to believe before seeing this. You seem to hide and stiffle your talents, like the Borg Cube hides the flowers. Any man who can make icons like yours, with that kind of talent and creativity, need not keep a job that he finds less than challenging, rewarding, and satisfying. Those are interesting descriptions, and what I would expect to see out of someone who writes as well as you do.

By the way...

Re: By the way...

Pretty much how I figured you’d be. Refined, eclectic, a bit esoteric, a little more open, a little more stable, less… obfuscated? reticent? hidden? something like that. Interesting, strong friends, and of course, at that time I assume you could still ride your horse, even though you knew there was trouble brewing. Protective of your oasis.

And , sadly, talent is pretty much useless unless you have some paper to back it up. I tried that route, once upon a time, and found I hated it. Being forced to conform to someone else’s idea of genius to earn a piece of paper that says someone’s given you their OK to be creative… BAH.

Talent

Oh, I understand how "paper" helps you to sell your talents, but nevertheless, with a bit of extra work and a creative approach, you can go very far without paper -- especially in creative fields like graphical design and things like that. One of the chief hardware engineers, responsible for the primary design of major product lines, has nothing more than a highschool diploma. Everything supassing that is self-taught. On the other hand, our lab technician is working in a job that undervalues his talents. He does much more for the company than that for which he is paid. They pay him to put together and hook up hardware for this and that, but he also does graphical design work and layout for product demonstrations. He designs some of the demos himself, and handles all of the decorations and layout for the company booth when these demonstrations are held at conventions.

I didn't do a narrative version, just sort of a hybrid sketch-with-callouts and random words here and there. I'll wrap it up a bit nicer for here, though.

CUBEWhite marble, perfect proportions, perfectly smooth, with razor edges, about 4' on an edge, solid(?) [I wasn't sure on that, so put a ? after it], flawless. Was resting on flat sand, but the sand has drifted a bit over a few days(?) and forned a sculpted shape around the base of the cube. Wind is from the left, sun is strong and from behind and to the right a bit. The cube is rotated so that an edge is closest to the vantage point (which seems to be a floating 'camera point' or 'eye point' ... I'm not there, it's just the sky, sand, and the cube). 5 words: Solid, Pure, Angular, Cool, Inert.

LADDERLeaning on the front-left side of the cube, about 5.5 feet tall, with 5 rungs, made of weathered, greyed wood, bottom about 2 or 3 feet from the cube, top just sticking up past the edge, where it rests.

HORSEBrown, mare(?), sleeping a ways behind and to the right of the cube (opposite the ladder), maybe 50' away?, I'm thinking of Mad Max's 'gulag horse' from Thunderdome. It's not hurt, though, but it is lying down, sleeping (belly towards the cube, ass-end pointing at the far horizon). Not saddled.

STORMA sandstorm off to the left, might get here in a few minutes, maybe a few hours, looks like a low wall of sand, but I know it's pretty thin, mostly dust, with a bit of grit. Will cover the cube and horse with a layer of dust/grit, but won't cause any real injury (think 'thin Martian sandstorm', strong winds, but no force). Mostly harmless, made of the same gold-hued sand/dust the desert is...

FLOWERSHonestly, my first reaction was "What flowers? Flowers don't go here." but then it seemed to insist, so I figured there were some (4 to 6?) small, white-petalled, struggling flowers, growing in the lee of the cube, protected by it (from the ever-present wind), and basking in the extra sunlight reflected off the sunny faces (the right side is where the sun arcs ... guess this isn't an equatorial desert, and if the sun rises in the East, then I guess we're in the northern hemisphere, I'm looking East, and the wind is from the North [not that it matters]). The flowers apparently reproduce by airborn pollen, since there aren't any bees around. Perhaps these white flowers are desert roses[underlined on my paper, I'd also underlined "white" in "white-petalled"]?

So, in reality I'm arrogant, neutered (and childless), have few friends, relatively stable, quite logical (but prone to occasional fits of strange), married (closely so, I'd say), and have a bit of spare time today. In all, I think the thing got 3/4 of it right, suprisingly. Fun, but hardly serious. ;-)